


A Song on the Autumn Breeze

by spoilers



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 19:50:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5468795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spoilers/pseuds/spoilers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she was young, Taki and her grandfather ventured out onto the mountain to search for a visiting spirit. After finding his map in her grandfather's papers, Taki, Natsume, and Tanuma make the trip themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Song on the Autumn Breeze

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darkcyan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkcyan/gifts).



Tanuma was the one who found the bundle of papers sticking out of a book on the bookshelf.

The three of them were going through Taki's grandfather's library-- her, Tanuma, and Natsume-- the books the rest of the family often left alone. Nyanko-sensei was dozing quietly on a side table; Taki had to stop herself from resting her hand on his back when she came around to see what he had found.

"Oh! This is for the shamisen player!" she said, smoothing the papers out with her hand so they would lay flat in between the pages. For a moment the sight of his handwriting, shockingly familiar, made her heart ache. These were the notes he'd taken throughout the year on just this one spirit, documenting each time he'd gone out to search, including a map that she herself had added to.

"Shamisen player?" Natsume asked, coming up behind Tanuma and looking down at the map.

"You two don't know it?" When they both shook their heads, Taki crossed her arms and thought back for a moment. "Mm, well, it's a local legend... every eight years, on the first full moon after the leaves begin to change color, a spirit passes through the mountains. It's said she has a resting spot, one where she can see the treetops of the entire valley, and on the day after the moon she waits one day before returning home, playing her shamisen for anyone who seeks her out. My grandfather and I tried going when I was young, but... well, I suppose if we did come across her, we wouldn't have known about it."

She wasn't disappointed back then. She wasn't certain if she even truly expected to hear anything, or if she just thought of it as a fun trip with her grandfather. Still, she had to wonder... if he could have seen what she'd managed to see for herself, or if he'd even had the chance to hear about Natsume and Tanuma's experiences...

Tanuma, who was rifling through the reports her grandfather had written, tapped his finger twice on the date of their last visit. "Hey, Taki... she comes back this year, doesn't she?"

"Huh?" She counted back the years for a second before she realized he was right. "Wow, it's been that long... Tanuma, you're not thinking of going, are you?"

"Why not? Even if we can't find her, we'll get to see the leaves changing color, right?"

Instinctively, they both glanced at each other in unspoken communication before glancing at Natsume. Taki felt her heart sink slightly; it was one thing for her and Tanuma to decide on it, but for them to override Natsume's feelings, as the one most likely to be inconvenienced by it... It was selfish of her to ask it of him, especially when he was always the one worrying about their safety in these matters. She was about to say as much, to put away the papers and move on to the next book, when Natsume spoke up.

"Taki, this was important to you and your grandfather, right?" He smiled, gently placing his hand on the map next to theirs. "I think we should go."

\---

Every night in the week leading up to the full moon, she and her grandfather would step outside the house to look up at the sky, her excitement building as the moon grew fatter and fatter. He showed her the journal he kept regarding this spirit as he refreshed his memory. She couldn't read most of it, but she knew that he had ventured out to the mountain several times in his lifetime, and each time wrote a report of what he had learned and what he had seen. Or what he hadn't seen, in most cases.

The map interested her the most; each path was a different color, the ink fading as it got older, the lines twisting and crisscrossing like a spiderweb. One of them, what looked like the oldest route, looked more like a drawing of a knot than anything else.

"The first time I tried to meet the spirit, I got lost on the mountain," he told her cheerfully, tracing his finger along the path with good humor. "That was a long time ago, and I was just a young man, too cocky and foolish to prepare in advance. I might have stayed lost, except that I came across a teenage girl who pointed me back to town. I bought this map that same night, and I've added to it every time."

The day before the full moon, her grandfather helped her make a charm to protect travelers from being lost. They made lunch ahead of time, with extra to leave as an offering to the spirit. She formed one rice ball into a bunny in case the spirit would appreciate something a little cuter than normal.

They woke up early that day and set out for the mountains. Her grandfather insisted on carrying their lunch basket, but he let her hold the map. She led them on a new route, until they found a beautiful clearing that showed her the town beneath them. They sat and had lunch and saw all the colors of fall in front of her, though try as she might, she didn't hear anything unusual. The sun was starting to set before her grandfather suggested they go back. She made sure her bunny onigiri was safe on a rock before they left.

\---

She wasn't expecting the path up the mountain to look familiar, and it didn't; she supposed too much had changed over the years for her to be able to recognize any particular patch of trees out of the bunch. The sight of the valley unfolding in front of her as they rounded the mountain, though-- the sudden shift from the trunks in front of them to the sight of thousands of trees in various shades of green, red, and gold-- that was when everything began to truly look like the place she had visited all those years ago with her grandfather.

Natsume and Tanuma stopped alongside her to appreciate the view.

"It's beautiful," Natsume said eventually, and the other two nodded.

"I remember this now... I remember standing here with my grandfather. There's a clearing up ahead, with a place to sit and a view of the valley."

Spirits lifted, they forged ahead-- until suddenly, Natsume tripped, sprawling forward along with their picnic basket.

Taki responded without thinking, grabbing Natsume's sweatshirt, and heard Tanuma's voice echo hers as they both shouted his name. They slid dangerously for a few inches, scattering small pebbles and dirt, before they managed to catch their balance.

"Are you alright?" Taki asked, as Tanuma looked back and forth across the empty air around them, arms raised. "Is something here, Natsume?!"

Natsume did not, however, look frightened; for a second, he looked almost confused, but then he smiled. "No, it's fine. I just tripped."

Taki leaned in to examine his face closely; on her right side, Tanuma did the same, almost as a mirror image. "Really?"

Natsume looked back at both of them-- exasperated, but not, Taki thought, particularly guilty-looking, before he started laughing. "I'm serious! I just didn't get a lot of sleep last night."

The look on Tanuma's face-- slightly disbelieving, as if he didn't know what to do with the sight of Natsume laughing-- set Taki off, and Tanuma joined in, until their echoing laughter startled all the birds out of the nearby trees.

Taki wiped the tears away from her eyes before she peered down the slope to see what had become of their lunch. "It all tumbled pretty far... I think we can walk down that way, if we're careful."

\---

She managed her own way back down the narrow mountain path, but as the streets leveled out she started lagging behind with a yawn. Her grandfather was still strong enough then to pull her onto his back, and she dozed against the back of his neck as he carefully walked them back to the house. His steps were gentle and regular, and his back was warm, and he hummed as he walked, low and pleasant in the back of his throat.

"Grandpa?" She was only half awake, and she almost wished she hadn't spoken when he stopped humming to hear her question. "...Did you hear the music?"

"Not tonight," he said, giving her a smile over his shoulder. "But many years ago, the day I followed that girl off of the mountain, I heard her humming along. I swear, if I listened closely, I could almost hear it in the background."

They came home late that night, with the moon hanging full and heavy overhead, and her mother scolded them both for getting dirty. She didn't get to hear the shamisen, but she remembers her grandfather laughing as he picked dried leaves out of her hair.

\---

It was slow-going, the three of them cautiously creeping their way down the steep incline, inching from tree to tree and holding out their arms for each other. Slowly, they collected the individual pieces of the lunches they had packed. Some of it had landed in the dirt and was inedible, but they found enough that survived the fall with minimal bruising, enough to have a small meal.

Taki spotted what seemed like the last of it-- another bunny onigiri, packed along in a burst of perhaps childish nostalgia-- a few meters away, but just as she was pointing it out, Natsume went stiff.

"Natsume?"

Both she and Tanuma straightened up, suddenly alert, and she was sure Tanuma was thinking the same thing she was-- was this the moment when they dragged Natsume into trouble again? Or, maybe worse, was this the moment where Natsume would run off, and tell them to stay out of it?

He was looking up, not at the rice ball but at the air above it, and for a moment she thought he hadn't heard her. Then he smiled, murmured a quiet, "I see," and then a little louder he said, "She remembers you, Taki. She remembers your grandfather, and the rabbit you left her last time."

"I see." She remembered. She remembered them both. The spirit her grandfather longed to meet... "I'm so glad. Please, take that one," she added, raising her voice to call to the spirit she couldn't see.

After a second, Tanuma perked up. "Hey... do you hear that?"

Taki listened very carefully, sitting there with her precious friends, and thought that beyond their heartbeats and the rustle of the autumn breeze, she could catch the faint sound of a shamisen.


End file.
